Review: Scribblenauts for Nintendo DS

In a short period of time Scribblenauts went from being a cool idea that many of us had heard little about to what looked like it could be the most highly anticipated Nintendo DS game of 2009. The game is based around a simple but ingenious mechanic, one that would be impressive on any system let alone a handheld. In Scribblenauts you type something in and then it appears, just like that. That thing–weapon, dinosaur, tool, helicopter, whatever–drops into the level and interacts with the environment just as if the developers had intended for it to be there all along. That’s no small feat given the game’s many levels, huge dictionary of available items (around 22,000), and varied goals.

Scribblenauts marks a fantastic achievement for its developer, 5th Cell, as well as a milestone in game development. The simple fact that a concept like this was brought to life is an accomplishment and worthy of much hype that we’ve seen built up for the release. Unfortunately this brilliant concept suffers from poor controls and frustrating situations that can leave the player feeling more like they are handling an technical demo (albeit and impressive one) than a fully finalized product. It’s a game that people will want to love, but not everyone will be able to get into as deeply as they would have imagined after first learning about the game.

Scribblenauts doesn’t really have a story behind it, aside from you being a boy who wants to collect stars (“Starites”). In each level you are tasked with getting those Starites but you have obstacles in your way–it might be a guard that you can’t kill or you might just have to make Santa Claus happy. You can call upon the staggering number of items in order to help you complete your task, which is where your creativity comes into play. It’s not exactly profound stuff, but that’s OK because the point is solving problems with your imagination and without a list of puzzle pieces in front of you. You have to decide what those puzzle pieces will be and how to solve a level. You can make it as easy or complex a task as you would like.

Sometimes this amounts to sheer brilliance. You can think your way around a problem, call upon a clever item, and solve the problem in seconds, but often things aren’t so easy. After all, 22,000 items sounds like a lot, but once your imagination really starts to flow you might be surprised by what you come up with. Also, not everything will react how you’d like so you can’t solve every situation with a bomb or tornado, even if those would be your initial guess.

This leads us to the single biggest issue with Scribblenauts, the controls. They are imprecise at best, and frustrating at worst. They really shouldn’t be the major focus of the game, but they often turn out to be a deciding factor in levels. You often have to navigate the items you call, which is often easier imagined than acted out, causing you to have to restart levels and rethink strategies. When each level is meant to be beat in multiple ways (in order to get rewards) you might be spending more time with certain puzzles than you’d like increasing the frustration factor. The game relies entirely on the stylus controls which are not up to the task–they feel inaccurate and hard to use. This is a problem in a game that doesn’t leave much room for error and requires lots of interaction with the game’s items. Luckily you always have the option to play a number of different levels so you can skip around if you find one you don’t like.

Another part of the game that seems like it could use some polishing are its unclear goals. On some levels you have something very precise to do, but on others the intentions are quite vague. For example in one early level you are presented with a few children dressed up for Halloween and the tip you get is “Trick or Treat”. At this point you’re really just in a trial and error situation. You can try “candy” which works. But after this where do you go? How about “icepop”? That also works. After these I pressed “Æ” a few times to see what that game would spit out. I got “šišky” which incredibly turned out to be a sort of treat, which worked also. Wanting to get creative I figured I’d trick the kids. How about a “trap”? Nope, that’s some sort of vehicle. How about a “lion”, that would scare them good right? Nope, he ate them. “Zombie” and “monster” both worked though. Ultimately not everything reacts how you’d expect so much of the game comes down to guess work–not something that takes away from it, but a factor that can be an issue under situations when precision is needed. (This level was rated a one star difficulty out of a possible four so there was more flexibility and no need to use multiple items.)

Scribblenauts rewards you for beating levels with the fewest items used, as well as calling upon new items, working quickly, and coming up with non-violent solutions. There are incentives to beating levels in multiple ways, most of which come in the way of “ollars”, the game’s currency. These can be used to unlock new levels in the world (there are 10 total, plus the tutorial), as well as songs and avatars.

If you are looking for more than the standard game play, Scribblenauts has a large number of unlockables and a level editor. These won’t make or break the game, but they will keep you coming back for more.

If you are going into Scribblenauts looking for a tight, refined puzzle game you are going to be disappointed. The game tries to do a lot and unfortunately falls short on some key areas. If you are going into it looking for something that you can play for 15 minutes here and there and do some incredible and zany things, then you should really enjoy what it offers. The goals may be simplistic and the controls limiting, but the best parts of the game are what you make of them, giving you incredible freedom to play the way you want. The way that Scribblenauts allows the player to leave the confines of a typical puzzle, that is to say the developer’s imagining of the solution, is something that is a major achievement and makes the game worth trying out.

Ultimately, people looking at Scribblenauts as an elaborate toy that they can experiment with will be much more pleased than those expecting a puzzle with clear right and wrong answers. The game can be extremely rewarding when you get in the groove and start thinking outside of the box (just not too far outside it).